#11 - Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins - Mary Poppins (1964)
Best Song: Feed the Birds
I've had a change of heart. See that deleted post up there? That was my original entry for #11. I typed it all up, I posted it, and then...well, as I was typing up my write-up I realized that I loved this character even more than I realized. So I'm holding her back and moving her to where my original #10 entry was going to go.
That one is Mary Poppins. Yes, I know, a bit of cheating is going on in this list, and arguably you could say this is a cheap shot too. I would argue that it's Julie ****ing Andrews we're talking about here, and it doesn't matter if she's animated, live-action, rotoscoped, or anything else you can think of. Julie Andrews has one of the great soprano voices in the world, and the day she lost her singing voice was a great tragedy for the history of musicals.
Why, then, would Julie not quite crack the Top 10? Well, in large part it's because what she gets to do and showcase in the role of Mary Poppins is a bit bland compared to the Top 10 entries. It's wonderful, no doubt about that, but it's also something we've seen done better in The Sound of Music. And don't get me wrong - I love Mary Poppins. I think it's a great, underappreciated movie that's both great fun to watch and, at times, downright hilarious. It's not for no reason that it's considered the standout of pre-2000 Disney live action film. Mary Poppins is a gem, and more and more I find that people just don't remember it anymore.
Julie's biggest moment comes in the middle of the movie, when a seemingly unrelated-to-anything plot point crops up in the form of the little old bird woman on the steps of St. Paul's cathedral. The song "Feed the Birds" is one of my Top 5 Disney songs ever, and as with most of these Disney heroines, it's truly the singer herself who sells it. Everything about this scene is perfect, from the vocal performance (which is the sole merit of this ranking on this particular list), to the cinematography, to the orchestration, to just the look on Julie Andrews' face as the orchestra swells and we fade back in on her looking wistfully off at nothing in particular before the soft verse comes back to finish the song.
There are songs in this movie I don't like, songs that just don't particularly work. For me the perfect example of this is "Stay Awake", which is sort of a meandering song that doesn't go anywhere and serves the exact same purpose as several other songs (like Feed the Birds, for example, which does it a hell of a lot better). It's really the overlong, somewhat one-note nature of the role that keeps Mary from cracking the Top 10. But, no matter what, this truly is a classic, worthy of recognition on any Disney heroines list.
Coming up next: the REAL answer to my last hint.